Artificial Rain
by Whisper-Otonashi
Summary: The first day and already it hurt to breathe, smoke taking the place of oxygen, cold, artificial rain ripping through the sky, killing anyone it touched. Only the first day and Matt already knew how he felt about the whole situation. Tragedy, AU.


**Artificial Rain**

The first day and already it hurt to breathe, smoke taking the place of oxygen, cold artificial rain ripping through the sky, killing anyone it touched.

There were many clouds today, those really dangerous ones, Matt mused.

The round kind that glistened with red flecks, and shone in the sun.

The kind that spit out the killing rain with bright flashes of lightning.

Matt almost laughed. 'Listen to me, I sound like a freakin' poet!' …But saying it aloud would give his position away, so he stayed quiet, preferring a lack of laughter to a lack of life. So he only _almost_ laughed. He _almost_ spoke his thoughts aloud. It would've been weird anyway, considering where he was. So his shoulders in their uniform camouflage suit twitched slightly, but that was the only thing to suggest he had any emotion at all. He hated all the conformity. He hated the reasons behind 'their' actions.

Matt simply loathed it.

It was only the first day and Matt already knew how he felt about the whole situation. 'I hate it.' He thought.

'I hate the 'rain'. I hate these 'storms'. I hate this hellhole I'm trapped in.' Matt sighed and adjusted his grip on his own shining rain bringer, the cold metal of the gun muted in his gloved palms.

He really did hate these things, it was true. But the one thing Matt hated most was…"Myself. For getting into this mess in the first place." He hoarsely whispered, smokers' lungs deprived of their drug, his back sliding lower down the muddy trench wall. He sat in a puddle, boots grimy and muck covered, puddle edges rippling with faint raindrops. The actual ones, made of water. Not metal and death.

And for a while, Matt was resting.

Resting, but not quite. It wasn't possible to completely rest during a war.

Not unless you wanted to die.

Matt readjusted his position again, tucking himself further into the mud, trying vainly to protect himself from the bullets flying around his head, though he could still feel some low flying ones shake through the sludge encrusted in his crimson hair. He grimaced.

"Why did I let myself be dragged into this? I should have known it would be nothing like my videogames." He muttered around a nub of a burnt out cigarette, gray ash dangling, flaking like snow, off the end.

He was staring at the gunsmoke and debris tarnished sky, wondering why the hell he had gotten himself involved in something as stupid as this. He was not cut out for direct combat, Matt knew this about himself. He was a genius hacker, not a superhero, not a 'Woo, let's fight!' kind of guy. No, Matt was the type of person who hides in their room and collects information from inaccessible places, causes distractions from behind the scenes. So Matt had no idea what he was doing here, sitting in a trench on the frontlines of a war, actual and metaphorical rain pouring down on him.

'Actually,' Matt glanced tiredly to his left, 'I _do_ know exactly what I'm doing here.'

Because crouched on his left side, sharing the tiny mud-pit with him, inhaling the same rancid, gore filled, dusty air as Matt himself, was Mello.

Golden haired spitfire Mello, Matt's best friend.

Mello was the leather wearing, gun toting, 'I'm gonna shoot you if you say something I disagree with' type. He was impulsive and bad tempered, and quick to use threats. He also did most of his work behind the scenes, like Matt, but that was really only because once, when he was still only 17 (Forever ago, Matt would say), he had been a Mafia boss, and because everything he did under that title was essentially illegal. Matt was basically his techie pal, his lackey. But beneath all the usual insults and orders, they were still friends. And Matt always looked after his friends.

So here he was, clutching the rain-slicked grip of a metal death trap (not that he wasn't used to it, he _had_ been in the Mafia with Mello after all) huddled in the face of near certain death beside his hotheaded friend.

Mello glanced over at Matt, staring at him for a minute before smirking tiredly. "Not exactly what you expected, is it." It wasn't a question.

Matt shook his head in answer. 'No,' he thought dryly. 'War is never what you first imagine it to be like.' He would never admit to Mello that he was actually terrified. Years of Mafia and Yakuza dealings had given him a flawless poker face, and heck if he was going to admit his weakness to his best friend, in the middle of a war to boot.

And Matt would never admit it to anyone, himself included, that the person he was truly terrified for was not himself, but the blood and grime streaked one next to him. Because Mello was like his brother; they'd stuck up for each other at the orphanage, celebrated each other's successes together, partied until late at night together, planned revenge on those who defeated them together, and got in trouble for setting the House's gardens on fire together. Mello was, for all purposes, Matt's brother. Matt couldn't really recall anyone from his real family, so he quite liked having a 'sibling' he actually knew.

Mello was Matt's best friend. Mello was Matt's brother. And Matt… 'I would die to keep him alive.' Matt thought grimly, attention drawn and suddenly cautious of the eerie silence that wafted like a heavy fog around him. Muttered Latin vows made him glance at Mello, who had his leather gloved fingers tangled in the silvery chains of the dog tags and rosary wrapped loosely around his neck, praying quietly, muttered pleas to the heavens. They were both aware of their comrades in other trenches doing much the same, everyone on high alert because of the sudden stillness. The artificial rain had trickled out, though the cold, wet water droplets still persisted. The crying clouds and their tears, the '_ssssshhhhhhhhhsssssshhhhhhhh' _of soft patters hitting the ground, dripping off the sparse branches of half demolished trees, the trunks blasted to bits by bombs and the remains riddled with bullet holes. The silence rang in the troops' ears deafeningly.

Matt shivered, repressing a growing urge to panic. The silence was messing with his head, making his panicking mind create and play, like bad horror movies, the worst possible scenarios. His imagination bounded, cackling maniacally, so hectically that Matt hardly noticed when Mello's breathing hitched and his praying petered out. But somewhere in the back of his feverish mind, he did notice. So Matt raised his mud-streaked face, shaking his clumped crimson hair out of his covered green eyes (_Why_ do you still wear those ridiculous orange goggles? Mello had demanded the day before) and immediately froze.

Jade eyes widened impossibly as Matt took _one, two _seconds before he shouted and forcibly shoved Mello out of the way, his friend landing in the mud and blood and who knows what else with a loud SPLASH!

Matt sees Mello's sapphire eyes flash for a minute (Was that anger in his eyes? Hurt? Terror? Matt can't tell.) and quite suddenly, with a rather deafening sound he can't entirely identify (Which is strange, Matt is a genius after all), Matt can't tell anything anymore. He can't hear, can barely see, and as his mind slips, screaming, from the ledge of consciousness, one image is frozen, burned into his retinas.

Mello's face is twisted in a silent howl (silent to Matt's failing ears, anyway), shocked eyes wide and wavering and so _blue _Matt swears it's like looking into the sky when there are no clouds, and the sun practically drowns out the azure color. And before Matt completely loses it, he whispers something to Mello, closes his eyes, and sleeps, a single cold, artificial raindrop nestled in his heart.

Matt doesn't mind. (Not too much.) He would gladly die to keep Mello alive.

Years later, after the war was won, after the Kiranians had surrendered, alone in his dilapidated apartment building, the floorboards creaky and beginning to rot, faucets dripping steadily, lights either shattered by bullets or naturally burnt out, plaster walls peeling and broken, Mello Kheel lay curled up in his bed.

Like every other night he lay there, ancient, cracked rosary clenched in one shaking hand, cold, unforgiving dog tags reading "Matt Jeevas" ('Hey Mel, if I die, keep my tags to remember me by, okay?') threaded between the fingers of his other.

And lying there, sheets tangled messily, shadows looming, Mello cries, the familiar salty rain reminding him of another rain, a cold artificial rain that killed everyone it touched.

"…Goodbye, Mello…"


End file.
